Western Civilization ch 25

Terms from chapter 25

STUDY

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Auguste Comte

his philosophy was characteristic of much nineteenth-century thought; gave greater attention to the process of historical change; sought to erect a comprehensive philosophical system that would encompass all human knowledge; believed that his era had opened a final stage in historical development; was especially impressed by the social role of religion, the conquests of natural science, and the possibilities of human progress; honoured the role of established religion but announced its demise, substituting a "religion of humanity" of his own invention; his ideas contributed greatly to widespread acceptance of the view that civilization progressed with increased knowledge discovered through the scientific method and that the great need now was for the scientific study of society and of humankind itself

Benjamin Disraeli

led the Conservatives; embraced empire in principle as well as practice; got a large bloc of Suez Canal shares for Britain and thus gained a voice in Egyptian affairs and counterbalanced French influence there; had Queen Victoria declared Empress of India in 1876

Boer War

ultimately a conflict between the Dutch-speaking white farmers (Boers) and the British government; in 1899 the Boers declared war; British forces rapidly occupied the major cities of the Boer republics, but it took two years to subdue the Boers' skilful guerrilla resistance; British victory allowed the establishment a few years later of the Union of South Africa

Sun Yat-sen

led the revolution of 1911 and the establishment of a constitutional Republic of China

William Gladstone

won the election of 1880 after campaigning against the immoral and un-Christian imperialist policies of the Conservatives

Boxer Rebellion

rebellion in 1900-1901; resulted in the killing of more than two hundred Westerners, mainly missionaries and traders but also some diplomats; the Western powers responded with a heavy military intervention, led by Russia and Germany, which forced the Chinese government to grant further concessions and pay a large indemnity

Cecil Rhodes

had gained a near monopoly of the world's diamond production before he was thirty; became prime minister of the Cape Colony and used his position to scheme and propangandize for a South African federation dominated by the British

dialectical materialism

the idea, according to Karl Marx, that change and development in history results from the conflict between social classes; economic forces impel human beings to behave in socially determined ways

Dmitri Mendeleev

published the periodic table in 1869; his table established a marvelous symmetry, so precise that the elements could all be charted by atomic weight, with similar elements occurring at regular intervals

Fashoda Crisis

in 1898 a group of French soldiers arrived at Fashoda a few days before British forces that were moving into the Sudan; both nations considered their troops' encounter at Fashoda a matter of national honour; for weeks Great Britain and France were on the brink of war over the obscure outpost at Fashoda, which neither nation's general staff had sought; ended when the French chose to give way

Formosa

gained by Japan in the war of 1894-1895

Herbert Spencer

published Synthetic Philosophy in a series of studies that first appeared in the 1850s; his ideas were closely tied to those of Comte and Darwin; his contemporaries ranked him among the major philosophers of all time; his central principle, which made progress "not an accident, but a necessity," was the evolution of all things from simplicity to complexity, from homogeneity to diversity; with heavy erudition, he traced this process in physics and biology, sociology and psychology, economics and ethics; applied his theses to physical matter, to human understanding, and to social institutions; argued that the marketplace is the true test of the fittest, and that it must be uninhibited by state intervention even in behalf of welfare or public education

Hobson

British economist; published Imperialism: A Study, a critical tract that has been heavily attacked by subsequent scholars yet remains the starting point of modern analysis; was eager to show that imperialism offered little real benefit to commerce; noted that emigrants preferred to go to the Americas, and Britain's trade with the European continent and the Americas was far greater and growing faster than its trade with its colonies; found the economic explanation of imperialism to lie in the influence of speculators and financiers

James Clerk Maxwell

in 1873 published equations that described the behaviour of electricity, magnetism, and light in terms of a single, universal system; related gravity, magnetism, electricity, and light

Karl Marx

was born in 1818 into a middle-class Rhineland Jewish family; became editor of a famous liberal newspaper, the Theinische Zeitung; his attacks on censorship and his views on economics led the Prussian government to demand his removal; began in Paris the systematic development of his own ideas; outlined his theory of history in a powerful, apocalyptic tone in the Communist Manifesto, written jointly with Engels, which was published just before the revolutions of 1848; devoted the rest of his life to the painstaking elaboration of his ideas in essays, letters, and the comprehensive treatise Das Kapital; wrote with verve on contemporary affiars but fundamentally wanted to build a comprehensive philosophical system; said the goal of history was the classless society

Lenin

the leader of Russia's Marxist revolutionaries; provided a Marxist interpretation of a subject on which Marx had written little; wrote Imperialism: The Last stage of Capitalism; agreed with Hobson that the stimulus behind empire building was basically economic and that the essence of colonialism was exploitation; arged that imperialist ventures grew not just from the policies of a few but from the very dynamics of capitalism itself

Leopold II

sponsored vigorous exploration of the Congo

Mohammed Ali

the Ottoman governor in Egypt; formed an alliance with France when he set out on an independent course that led Egypt to fight a war against Turkey and to conquer Sudan; was determined to create a more modern and efficient regime; adopted institutions like those of the Napoleonic state; established French as the language of administration in Egypt; opened the country to other European influences

positivism

philosophy of Comte elaborated in ten volumes published between 1830 and 1845; established as an international movement even before Comte's death; said the key to civilization was humanity's understanding of the world, which had developed through three historical stages; in the first, theological, stage human kind interpreted everything in terms of gods who lived in nature; in the second, metaphysical stage, people learned through Christianity to think in more abstract terms; in the third, positive stage, human understanding was becoming scientific through objective and precise observation followed by generalization in the form of scientific laws

sati

Indian custom in which a widow placed herself on her husband's funeral pyre; was banned

Siam

was opened to European trade in 1855; only it preserved its independence from European control east of India and south of China; was willing to modernize

social Darwinism

extension of Darwin's principles to more current concerns; tended to extend the formal concept of species by loose analogy to groups, classes, nations, or civilizations; some used it to argue that better education and social welfare constitued a higher stage of evolution and that an environment thus improved would produce a superior species; was more commonly used to justify competition in the marketplace or between nations, as the mechanism in evolution in which the fittest triumph